Courtesy of Olivia Guzman
In an trade dominated by males, stats and swagger, alumna Olivia Guzman found that her best reporting software was one thing excess of human: the braveness to be weak.
As a 2022 graduate of the McCombs School of Business with a level in advertising and marketing, Guzman kickstarted her profession in sports journalism as an on-air expertise for Texas Student Television earlier than touchdown her present function as the sideline reporter and in-stadium host for Rice University.
“I am the microphone for said person’s story,” Guzman stated. “You have the ability to control the narrative and once you take on that responsibility, it changes your perspective.”
Since graduating from UT, Guzman has had “the world’s weirdest career journey.” She has served as a multimedia journalist for Nexstar Media, a contractor for Formula One and served the state as Miss Texas Volunteer.
She discovered the fundamentals of sports reporting by the excessive caliber of Texas Athletics, however curated her capability to elicit vulnerability in storytelling from the GALvanize program.
Former FOX Sports reporter Laura Okmin created GALvanize to present younger ladies one thing she lacked early in her profession: a community of supportive friends. GALvanize is devoted to coaching and mentoring ladies in the sports trade who’re aspiring broadcasters, reporters, producers, administrators and even some uncertain of their path.
“It creates truly a support system of women in an industry that is extremely male dominated,” Guzman stated.
In a 2022 GALvanize bootcamp with the Los Angeles Chargers, Guzman and the different ladies in her cohort have been tasked with interviewing a range of rookies.
“I got assigned to the guy who was Mr. Swag,” Guzman stated. “We ended up having probably the most powerful story in the room. … His whole personality was a front and he started crying when I was speaking with him.”
The vulnerability she demonstrates in her reporting bled into her function as Miss Texas Volunteer. After the July 4 floods in the Hill Country, Guzman was contacted by The Salvation Army to journey to Kerrville, Texas and be on their emergency response workforce.
“While I was there, I was introduced to an organization called the United Cajun Navy,” Guzman stated. “They basically are a search and rescue organization, all of these people are ex-marine, ex-navy or ex-military who go to natural disasters and search for the missing people.”
Although Guzman was stationed with the United C. Navy as a result of of her function as Miss Texas, her reporter instincts are what ready the first responders for upcoming interviews with the media.
“I was the first person that asked them how they were doing,” Guzman stated. “(I became) therapy decompression with these guys and helped them verbalize what they had seen and what they were doing.”
Empathy as an strategy to Guzman’s reporting type has illustrated the significance of vulnerability in storytelling, particularly in an trade the place it’s tough to uncover.